Video conferencing for EFL

It's not often that you look at a product and think 'Ah! That's exactly what I've been looking for! And it's free!' But tokbox does seem to be that kind of product for me.

For some time now I've been looking round for a suitable video conferencing type application and while there have been a few that look okay, like SnapYap which I reviewed a week or two back, when I saw tokbox this morning I realised that here was a video conferencing tool that had exactly what I wanted and a bit more.

Here's a quick video demo of what it can do.

• To view the demo in a new window click here (3mins - 3.5Mb)
• Download the demo as Quicktime movie (5Mb)
• Download the movie for i-pod (7Mb)

So what do I like about it?

• It's free and doesn't require any downloads.
• I was registered and signed in without disclosing any personal information (apart from email address) within less than 3 mins of finding the site!
• It has a range of ways to communicate including group video conferencing, person to person live video calls, video email messages, and a video feed.
• You can embed videos or your call messages into blogs websites and a whole range of social media sites including Facebook and Blogger.
• You can report inappropriate use and users who are doing 'unsuitable' things with their accounts get deleted.
• Students can use it privately, with groups of friends or publicly.
• I like the inbox idea so you can check your video mail and get alerts sent to your own email inbox when someone wants to call you or has left you a message.
• It has a really nice clean easy intuitive interface.
  

Here's a quick message that I created to show you the kind of quality you can get.

So how could we use this with ELT or EFL students?

• Chinese - video - whispers - Use the video email feature to record a short text. Send it to the first of your students. Ask your student to write down the message and then record it themselves and send it to the next student. Each student should rerecord and send the message on to another, until the last student sends it back to you. You will then see how accurately the message matches to your original text.
• Interactive video learning diary - You could get students to create an interactive learning diary, they could email you their video summary of what they feel they have learnt that day and you could then respond. Your videos would form a good learning record and students would be able to look back at them later and see how they had improved -quite literally - and also hear the improvements in their speaking ability. This is also a great way to give your students one-to-one-time which can often be a problem in class.
• Class survey - You could send a video message to your students with a class survey question that they could respond to. This would be a good way to carry out classroom research, decide on learning goals and make sure that all students had a means to feedback to you in private and on an individual basis.
• Different perspectives - Show some of your students a video clip or picture, that includes a number of people (scenes from films with bank robberies, where a number of people are involved are quite useful for this). Then ask the students to imagine that they are one of the people in the film or picture and they need to describe what happened. Ask them to a video giving their account of what happened. You can then ask the other students to imagine they are detectives and watch the clips your students have created and make notes to piece together what happened. The 'detective' students should then try to recreate the scene using the student videos to guide them. Afterwards they can watch the original film clip or picture together and see how well they did and what they missed.
• Favourite poems or haiku - Students could record themselves reading their favourite poem or haiku, you could then embed the videos into a webpage or blog as a class poetry collection.
• Live tutoring support - This looks like an ideal tool for supporting distance learners and doing 'face to face' tutorials.
• Video interviews - You could get in touch with someone for your class to interview. Just have one computer plus camera set up in class, and a visiting expert, friend or colleague on the other end for your students to interview. They could also interview an expert in groups from home with a conference call.
• Video lesson with conferencing - You could use the conference call to video cast your lessons to a group of distance learners.
• Video twitter - using the feed feature you could create a kind of video Twitter, with your students video micro-blogging about learning English, their day at school, or any topic they find interesting.
• Text and video message - Using the video email feature, you could record a video of yourself reading a text, then add the text within the email message. You could include some errors in the text and get them to watch the video and correct the errors.
• Create a collaborative story - Email students a video with the first line of a story and ask them to record your line of the story and add their own, then pass it back, or pass it on to another student. This way you could build up a story between the group over a period of time.
• Tip of the day, word of the day - Send you students a tip or word of the day by video email. These could be exam tips, study tips, recommended websites, or words and definitions.
• Video dictation - Send a video email of yourself dictating a text and ask your students to watch and write the text in the email and send it back to you for correction.

So why use video conferencing with your EFL / ELT students?

• It' a great real life IT skill as these kinds of tools are going to become a normal part of our day to day work and pleasure daily routine.
• IT adds an element of personalisation to your lessons and materials and can make it easier to build up rapport, especially with distance students.
• It can help you get some one-to-one time with your students.
• You can use it to create some really nice personalised materials.
• Students can use it (with caution) to find people with similar interests to talk to or to do learning / language exchanges.

Possible problems

• As ever be sure your students are aware of how to protect their privacy and that they don't share any personal information or contact details with people they don't know.
• Try to keep any video messages you make quite short or they will become slow / bandwidth heavy to watch. This is almost certainly a tool that will be more useful to broadband users.
• Students are going to need a webcam and a microphone of course.
• Even though inappropriate use can be reported, someone has to see it to report it, so if that is going to be one of your students, make sure they know how to report anything that disturbs them.
• You have to be careful with any tool that enables mass communication, even if it's only email, but despite that I think that tokbox is a fantastic product and one which can really enhance your teaching and your students learning. I think they have come up with a fantastic product that could become a market leader in the field of web based video communications.
• Appearance is important, so watch out for bad hair days, hangovers ad make sure you wear something nice and try to find a room with some good natural light.
  

Fantastic! Hope you and your students enjoy it. Happy EFL video conferencing

Nik Peachey

Similar postings

• Make your own chat room

Naming My Sources: Part 1

I've decided to start naming some of the sources I use to locate new and interesting websites and information. I've decided to do this for a number of reasons

• I just don't have time to write about everything I find, so this gives people the opportunity to find things for themselves and perhaps write about them.
• I always feel guilty that I don't acknowledge the sources of much of the information I get. This isn't because I'm guarding my sources, it has more to do with not working in a very organised way. I tend to mark interesting sites and come back to them later, by which time I can't remember the original source.
• I don't have a blog roll, but I would like to send some kudos to some of the sites and site owners that I feel have really helped me.
• A number of people have asked me how and where I find great sites to write about.
  

If you have a blog and it doesn't appear on this list, please don't be offended, I will try to make this a regular feature as there are so many that I don't think it's useful for readers to put them all into one post.

Lastly, before I get started I would also like to say that the list is not in order of importance, so I'm not saying that any one source is better than another. Anyway, here goes:



KillerStartups
This site is a great source of new websites that have just been launched or are in Beta or Alpha still. One thing I really like about the site is that users can rate the site in terms of its likelihood of surviving. There is some basic information about the new sites, then some reasons why it might succeed and some reasons why it might fail. Users can also add their comments. This is potentially quite a useful activity for students too as it gets them reading and evaluating - valuable thinking and analytic skills practice.



Go2Web20.net
This is another great source and one that I could browse for hours. It also has a really nicely designed interface which shows you the logos of all the sites. If you mouse over the logo you'll see a brief description and clicking on the logo gives you a more detailed description. There's a search engine too, if you know what you want to find. Every time I visit the site I find at least 4 or 5 really interesting sites within a few minutes.



WebWorkerDaily
This is another favourite of mine and is the source of lots of great information and ideas. It's a great place to get ideas, tips and information about ways to work more efficiently with your computer, but tends to be more 'geek' than educationally orientated. Still a great source of information though, and it's well worth checking through the archives if you have some time.



Demo Girl
This is a great source for finding useful sites and demo girl also provides video tutorials showing how to use the sites. There's quite a huge archive of information on her site too, so it's well worth sorting through the archive search categories on the right of the screen.



MakeUseOf
This is another great source of information and in particular web based apps or free software. They tend to focus mostly on free stuff which is handy and they have a great Web2.0 Directory which is worth browsing through, especially if you are looking for a particular tool.

Well that's probably enough to keep you busy for a while. All of these sites provide an RSS feed, so if you don't have time to look through the archives, just sign up to the feed and keep up to date with what's new on them.

If you don't have a feedreader, you can check out my article on Creating a personal hompage using Netvibes as that can really save you some time.

Hope you enjoy these sources and find something useful. More coming in the next week or two.

Best

Nik Peachey

Karaoke with a Social Network

Well it had to happen! As every other kind of site these days has a social network attached to it, why not karaoke too?The site I've been looking at is called RedKaraoke and it has quite a few useful features. There isn't a huge range of songs there yet, but users can upload their own, it also has a web cam feature so for potential singers who want to be seen as well as heard you can have your web cam hooked up while you sing.

As with most karaoke, there are background tracks and you see the words of the lyrics highlighted as you are supposed to sing them. You can rate other singers too and have your own profile as well as take part in forums (mainly used for technical support by the looks of things) and there's also synchronous chat too.

Click image to enlarge

The high ranking singers get pushed to the top, and if you like someone you can leave encouraging messages of support.

So why use this with EFL students?
Anyone who has ever taught a EFL / ELT will know how powerful and motivating music and song can be to help students acquire language, so sites like this can be really useful.

• If your students are interested in music and singing, you can get them along to the site to record a few of their favourite songs (Onlye the more confident students though)
• You can get students to listen and rate other singers too and leave messages for them if they like them (though don't encourage messages to singers they don't like)
• The site has the words and music to quite few songs, so even if your students don't feel confident enough to record themsleves, they could still get some practice in the privacy of their own homes.
• If students do record themselves you can get them to rate each other and see if any of your students can get into the top ranking list.

What I like about it

• Well as ever for me the first attraction is that it's free.
• There are a range of songs and it's not all in English, so if you are teaching or learning other languages then there is potential material here.
• I like that you can have the web cam recording too.
• The interface is quite easy to get around simple to use.

What I wasn't so sure about

• I think this is going to be pretty bandwidth hungry, especially if you are using a web cam too, so only one for broadband users working alone from home.
• The quality of some of the sound files wasn't so great, but that's always going to be the case with Web 2.0 type content.
• Looks from the forum like a few people have had problems with getting their recording synchronised, though I'm guessing that switching off the wqebcam would help with this.
• As with any site where students are asked to register and add a profile, be sure your students know how to protect their pivacy and personal information.

In theory, if you have students who like karaoke, this could be a potentially very useful site. To be honest I'm not a great fan of the art and have to admit that I didn't make recording myslef, but thought I would share the site anyway, as I know some teachers and students really enjoy it.

Hers the ful URL of the site: http://www.redkaraoke.com/

Hope you find this useful

Best

Nik Peachey

Creating a personal homepage

Creating your own personal homepage / feed reader can be really simple to do and can also help you to save time and stay in touch with what's going on in your professional and personal life.


My own personal home page is something I use everyday and have open for most of the day. It brings me the news from all my favourite websites, blogs and yahoo groups and allows me to scan content from 20 -30 different sources within a few moments. This would otherwise take me a few hours!

So when I was asked to design a course to help teacher trainers use Web 2.0 technology in their teaching, I decided that a session on RSS and personal home pages was an essential.

I've been using a yahoo reader for more than 4 years now, but I've become increasingly impressed with some of the other readers on offer and so I decided to have a look around at what else was available. Some of the main ones that impressed me were:

• http://www.pageflakes.com/
• http://www.netvibes.com
• http://www.igoogle.com
• http://www.google.com/reader

Of these my favourites turned out to be Netvibes. So I produced this task list to help teachers set up their own homepage and explore some of the capabilities of Netvibes. Feel free to print and use this yourself if you want to set up your own homepage or use it with other teacher if you would like to help them set up their own page.

• Creating a personal homepage with Netvibes: Six tasks >> (1.3Mb pdf)
  

What I like about Netvibes

• It is quite easy to add feeds from sites and blogs
  
• The visual design is really nice and quite clean and modern with simple block colours
• There is a nice assortment of widgets to add including ones to enable me to check both my Apple DotMac email account and my Yahoo email account from the same page.
• There is some nice localisation of content
• The interface is generally pretty simple and intuitive so a good one to use with people who aren't too IT savvy
• I particularly like that you can set up the 'Web search' widget to search across multiple search engines and a variety of different formats from text to video.
• You can add and name different pages for different topics (one for ELT and a separate one for technology etc.)
• You can have private pages and also have public pages to share with your students.

So why should teachers use a personal homepage?

• There's lots of functionality all in one place, so it can save you loads of time
• You can keep in touch and up to date with blogs and other sites that change almost every day / few hours.
• The Flickr creative commons feed is a great source of images / flashcards to use in class or online.
  

So how can you use this with students?

• You can have your own personal homepage and add public pages for different students / classes to feed them information or publish their work or links to their projects. There's a great example of this which Gladys Baya created http://www.pageflakes.com/gladysbaya
• You can get students to create their own home pages and use the range of resources and widgets to help support their learning. Things like 'to do list' can help to set learning goals and remember homework. Sticky / web notes can be used to help them remember new vocabulary words and definitions.
• There are a host of different widgets from dictionary / thesaurus ones to word of the day, idiom of the day etc which can help our students learn.
• They can set up their homepage to supply them with the kind of English language content they are interested in, from sport to lifestyle.
  

Well I hope you find the task sheet useful and if you don't already have a personal homepage, you try this out. It really is a time saver.

I'd also be very interested to hear comments from anyone else who has their own personal homepage and to hear what you are using to create it. Any other Netvibes fans???

Best

Nik Peachey

Microsoft's free Learning Content Development System

When Microsoft start giving stuff away for free, it always makes me curious, and when I spotted this free LCDS (Learning Content Development System) a while back I decided to download it and give it a try.

If like me you've never had the patience (or the time and money) to really master a tool like Flash, but like the idea of creating interactive materials that can run online (SCORM compliant to run in an LMS), then this could be a handy tool for you. I spent the best part of a day working out how to use it and creating some materials with it for a teacher training session and by the end of the day I had two 'modules' each of 4 -5 different activity types combining images, audio, video and swf animation. Considering that I hadn't used this before and I had to actually write all the materials to put into it, I think that's pretty good for just one day, and having put the time into learning the program, I'm pretty sure that my next efforts will be much quicker.

What I liked about it

• It wasn't difficult to learn how to use. The interface is quite intuitive and I didn't need to consult the help or any support documentation.
• It's all point and click, no programming languages to learn.
• The results look quite professional
• It's SCORM compliant
  
• It has some nice task types. These are a few of my favourites:

This one is grouping type activity played against a timer. Users have to click the correct bucket to drop each item into.

This is one of my favourites, it's called 'Adventure' but I know it as a reading maze. User are shown a situation and given some options, They then see the outcome of the option they choose and have to make another choice and so on until they find the 'correct' way to resolve th problem. These can be really complex to write and arrange, but this one was quite easy to do and to review and make changes. I was also able to add different images to each page.


Another task type I liked was this tile flip activity. It's a novel variation on pelmanism, but it combines the matching pairs with a kind of true false activity. Basically each tile has a true statement on one side and a false one on the other, and the user has to line up rows of true statements. They also have a limited amount of cards they can turn to get it right and if they exceed the number of turns they have to start all over again.


Lastly, I liked that you can also set up tasks using either video or swf files. This is one I created using a Flash tutorial and the built in Note taking part of the interface.


What I wasn't so sure about

• It only seems to support swf and wmv files for video, which is a bit annoying, especially for MAC users.
• When I came to 'publish' / upload the materials to run online, it turned out that they wouldn't work without being uploaded to an LMS (with its own viewer)
• You need IE 7 with Silverlight installed to view the files (though there does seem to be a way to configure the files to run in Flash instead, which I'm assuming would allow you to view them in Firefox too).

Despite all of this, Microsoft's LCDS does seem to have huge potential for people like me who struggle with coding, but want to produce something that looks good and works well.

If you work in an institution that has its own LMS and you want to digitise some course materials to run online, then it could well be worth looking at as a cheap (free) solution.

If you'd like to try out the materials I created for training teachers in the use of IT and evaluating different task types, you can download the zip file of the whole session (9.4Mb) from here.

As I said above though, you'll need to have MS's Silverlight installed, then go to the file named 'wrapper.htm' and open it to begin working through the materials.

If you want to download the free LCDS and have a play yourself, then go here: https://www.microsoft.com/learning/tools/lcds/default.mspx

I'd be really interested to hear from anyone else who's tried this, especially if they've managed to get some working examples up online, so do drop me a line and share your experiences.

Best

Nik Peachy

Teaching Speaking in Second Life

For me, one of the main blocks to really developing online language learning courses has been the inability to supply real communicative speaking practice. VOIP software like Skype has certainly pushed the bounds of what is possible, as has the development of more effective web based video conferencing platforms, but in my opinion the biggest step towards making this possible has been the developments made in virtual worlds like There.com and Second Life which not only enable the use of voice, but can also help students to develop an understanding gesture and spatial relationships while speaking.

For anyone interested in giving it a try, here are four basic tutorial videos to help you get started with how voice works in Second Life and how you can use it for pair and group work.

Setting up voice
This video shows you how to activate the voice client and make sure that the quality of your sound is good. It also shows you how to select the correct input and output devices for sound in case you are having any problems.



Using the active speaker window
This video shows you how to find and use the active speaker window. This enables you to find out who is within 'voice range' of you, as well as enabling you to balance out the volume of the voices around you and even to mute other speakers if you just want to listen in to one person.



Using 'IM Call' for pair and group work
If you have large groups of students all in close proximity to each other, running activities like pair or group work can be chaotic as everyone hears what everyone else is saying. This video shows you how to use the 'IM Call' feature to put the students into pairs or groups, so that they only hear the people they are working with. Then you as the teacher can move between the groups monitoring, without having to hear the whole class all at once.



Balancing out relative volumes
Second Life has a lot of different sound sources, such as the ambient sound of trees and water around you, the sounds of gestures, background music, media players and th voices of people speaking. This video shows you how to balance out the sounds and turn off the ones you don't want to hear.



I would be really interested to hear comments from anyone who has used Video conferencing and or Second Life. Which do you prefer?

If you are new to or haven't tried Second Life yet, then I hope you find these videos useful and they encourage you to try it out. The videos were originally commissioned by The Consultants-E and are part of an introductory course for teachers they deliver on Edunation Island II and are used with their kind consent.

Best
Nik Peachey

My other postings on Second Life and virtual worlds

• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos
• Looking at There.com
• Machinima with Moviestorm
• 3B Village 3D browser

Visit my YouTube Channel to watch more of my videos
http://youtube.com/NikPeachey

Create your own social network 7 steps

Social networking is one of the key concepts that is driving Web 2.0 these days. With the opportunities social networks offer for collaboration and communication, this is certainly something we as educators should be thinking about being involved in.


In this tutorial I'd like to show you how to create your own social network on Ning, just by following 7 steps. I've published these as a downloadable PDF with screen shots, so that you can print them up and follow them / share them.

• 7 steps to creating a social network>> (944k pdf)
  

Perhaps though, more importantly it's worth thinking about some of the issues, and pros and cons surrounding the use of social networks.

Some advantages of creating your own network.

• Control over the content
  You can make sure nobody posts anything inappropriate or irrelevant.
  
• Control of who joins and the ability to block or ban people
  You can protect your members, ban anyone who doesn't behave or just limit membership to people you want to invite.
• Increased reach
  You can increase the reach of your F2F activities and get more people involved in the collaborative / collective development of your project.
  
• Good for your personal / career development
  You can learn a lot through being an administrator and develop some useful skills and knowledge.
  

Things to consider before you launch your network

• Closed (just people you invite) or Open (anyone who wants to join)
  I would advise starting off with just people you invite first to see how things take off. Deciding to make the network open could take a lot of consideration and demand much more 'policing' moderation from you.
  
• Do you have the time to manage the network?
  This is always a key question for teachers. Keeping the network active and up to date is going to take time. If you don't have the time / resources to put into it, best not to start.
  
• Do you have or can you find content to input to the network?
  Content is still the main motivation for teachers / students to get involved, even if it's just as stimulation for communication / collaborative work, you need to have something to offer and your members are going to need to 'get something' from visiting your network, or they won't be coming back.
  
• How / Will you be able to nurture collaboration between the members?
  Bit like the point above. Just providing a network isn't going to create collaboration. Ning is just a platform, you have to provide reasons, tasks, activities for members to collaborate on, or it just won't happen.
  
• What functionality (groups, forums, video and photo sharing) do you want to make available?
  Providing all of these on Ning is easy, but don't provide anything you can't use. If you provide the ability to share photos / videos, make sure you have something to share and reasons for sharing those things. You'll also need to think about who can share add and create. Are you going to keep complete control or share it with your members?
  
• Will you want to include advertising or ask it to be removed?
  If you are using Ning for educational purposes you can contact them and ask for advertising to be removed. You can also pay for a Ning platform and generate some money from the advertising yourself. I wouldn't recommend this as the amount may well not justify what you have to put up with from the advertisers. It's also better to get the advertising removed before you invite people to join, as some of the links can be inappropriate.
  
• What information will you want members to add when joining?
  You can decide what information members need to submit when they join and decide who sees the information. You find out a lot about them this way, but people can be put off by having to give away their information, so it could be best just to let them decide.
  
• How long will you want to keep the network live? (limited period or indefinitely)
  If you only intend to use the network for a specific time limited project it might be good to make this clear to your members, so they keep records of anything they develop within the network. Then when the project ends you can delete it with a clear conscience and keep the web tidy.

Looking at other networks
Before you start your own social network it's a good idea to have a look round at what others are doing. You might get some good ideas, see some potential pitfalls you want to avoid, or even decide someone already has your area covered and just decide to join them instead of recreating the wheel. Here a four networks for teachers that are well worth checking out.

• Mexico English Teachers' Alliance
  http://metamexico.ning.com/
• Teachers helping teachers
  http://teachershelpingteachers.ning.com/
• EFL Classroom 2.0
  http://eflclassroom.ning.com/
• Classroom 2.0
  http://www.classroom20.com/

Evaluation criteria
Deciding whether you want to join or recommend a network can be a tricky process, but as I've been looking around for ones I want to be part of I've built up a list of criteria that I find quite useful to have in the back of my mind.

• What features / functionality does the network offer? (Groups forums etc.)
  If there's no interaction, is it worth being a part of this network?
  
• Are the groups / forums active with a number of members exchanging information?
  Just because it has them doesn't mean they are being used. Have a look and make sure there is something there to learn and somebody there to learn with.
  
• Are these features being used? (If the network offers the use of photo or video sharing is this being used?)
  This is a good place to look to see what members are really sharing. Is there original content or is it all grabbed from YouTube / Flickr?
  
• Can you find out when the network was last active?
  Some networks are still online, but have died. Either the members or creator has lost interest. No point joining an inactive network.
  
• How many members does it have?
  Open networks that only have a small number of members, may be less worthwhile. Most networks need a critical mass to keep them moving, unless the members are very committed.
  
• Are any of the members’ photographs inappropriate?
  Many people join networks to pull traffic to their / unsuitable sites. A quick look at their avatar image could well give you a clue to which these are.
  
• Check out some of the member profiles. Does the profile disclose the member’s email address or other personal info that you wouldn't want to share?
  Make sure that the network isn't forcing you to disclose more information than you would feel happy with.
  
• Are there any ‘Google Ads’ on the site? Are these suitable or potentially offensive?
  Especially when recommending networks to others, it's good to check this first.
  
• Is there any interesting content on the site?
  Again, I still believe that content is king. Content + collaboration = learning! No content, don't join.
  
• Who is behind the network?
  Always wise to know who you are dealing with and sharing your information / knowledge with. Is it a group of like minded individuals, or a faceless company with dubious motivations?
  

Why create your own network for teachers?
Some suggestions:

• To support particular dispersed groups doing specific projects / training courses
  
• To record and share examples of practice and expertise specific to their context
• To help train and develop teachers in the use of ICT / Learning Technology

Why create your own network for students?
Some suggestions:

• Class research projects – create a network for your students based around a particular theme that they need to research.
• Inter-class project – create a network for sharing information with students in another school / country.
• Create a fan site with your students dedicated to a particular celebrity they like.
• Create a site to inform visitors about Morocco / your town or city, your culture etc.
• Create an online classroom and add links to materials, activities and tasks the students should do.
• Create a network to showcase students work and keep in contact with and involve parents.

Important

• You should not use Ning with students below the age of 13.
• Always protect your members’ privacy and make sure their email isn’t displayed and they don’t share addresses or telephone numbers with people.

Well if after all this you are still interested in creating your own network, here are the 7 steps again:

• 7 steps to creating a social network>> (944k pdf)

I've created one myself for a training course for teachers that I'm involved with. Personally I've found it really valuable so far.
For more opinions and to find out about alternative platforms, visit Larry Ferlazzo's blog post on Social Networks for the Classroom

Good luck with your networking and please do use the comments below to share your experience of using social networks.

Best

Nik Peachey